Despite the rescheduling of the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) occasioned by the mass failure of candidates in the previous examination conducted by the Joint Admission Matriculation Board (JAMB), which was attributed to technical glitches, seventy point seven percent of the students still scored below two hundred cut-off point.
Against this backdrop, a Professor of Educational Psychology, Guidance and Counselling with University of Port Harcourt, Chikwe Agbakwuru calls on stakeholders to take decisive action to save the ailing educational system in the nation.
Professor Agbakwuru who bared his mind in an interview with journalists in Port Harcourt appealed to the relevant authority to motivate teachers, fund the academic institution effectively for holistic development and tackle exam malpractice.
“They need to involve a merit driven system in our national life. Everything should be based on merit including the employment of teachers and other things. We should also provide proper guidance services in the school. We should sensitazise ever organ in the society to stop the worship of money and materialism at societal level.
Parents, guidance, and the society generally should control the addiction of our young ones to the social media”, he emphasised.
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Professor Abgakwuru cited the causes of the mass failure of UTMEs candidates in the country to include absence of parental attention.
“Children these days are not learning they are majority in social media and how to make money.
A mere look at our schools shows that the public schools lack functional libraries and laboratories.
The environment for teaching and learning is not conducive. There is this issue of academic corruption in the country, one of them is the recruitment of teachers based on premodial sentiment instead of merit”, he stated.
The academic stated that such a performance in external exams leads to the admission of academically poor students, and opens the floodgate of socio-economic retardation.
